Serving in the YEREVAN, ARMENIA MISSION for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
MAY 25, 2011-May 31, 2013

Monday, April 16, 2012

Nork

Jared and Vartuhi

Jared sent a lot of pictures this week that I will upload later today. Here's one of the pictures, though! Enjoy the letter!

Hello!

You know, speaking of wards, I actually found
in the Old Testament a mention of Moses' people being gathered up into
congregations called wards. I thought that was pretty interesting :)

But yeah, with confrontations, I really don't like them. I
often just walk away after they've had their fill because at that point
they don't really want to talk, they just want to yell. Sometimes
though I like making people think about why they have the feelings they
do. For instance, this week after I showed someone the Book of Mormon,
he went into his prideful state of 'all knowing' about us Mormons. He
told us, "Hey you Mormons are bad." So I said, "What bad thing have you
seen about us?" or, "What bad thing have you heard about us?" and he said
"Well what you say is bad" and I said, "What do we say that's bad?" and
he paused, trapped in his words and couldn't think of anything. So he
just started laughing and said, "Go preach in Turkey." I said, "Some of us
are already there. We're all over the world." Then he said "Well go
preach in China." I said "We're there, too." Then we both laughed
together. After closing words, I was glad that we ended on a better note,
even though he didn't want it. Some...past companions...have liked to
argue with people until things get bad and it just never turns out well
and is frankly really embarrassing.

Anyways, I'm in Nork now :) Got transferred this
week back to Yerevan. I'm now companions with Elder Hatch. He's from
Utah and hasn't been to college yet, but plans on applying to UVU or
Snow college. He's currently district leader over our district which
includes Sister Tolman, Sister Arslanyan, the Armenian-American, and the
APs. (Assistants to the President of the Mission) The branch we go to now is the Mission office as well, so that's
kind of nice. Our area includes Nork, Nor Nork, and Avan (if you want to
go on Google). The apartment here is wayyyy nice, almost as good as
little America, but not quite. We have water all the time and that means
flush toilets as well :) and really nice showers.

But this week we watched Conference again in
English. We didn't get through all of it though. About two talks into
the Sunday Afternoon we heard Sister Bailey, who was by the door, say,
"Oh my goodness!" We all looked out the door and saw the entire ground
flooded with water. Apparently the sewer system had backed up in the
bathrooms and was regurgitating water into the building. So we spent the
rest of the 3 hours mopping up bad water as the plumbers came to fix
it. It was kind of funny what the plumbers did to try and fix it. They
apparently had to go outside and into the manhole to fix the problem,
but the manhole had been paved over with concrete when they redid the
road, so they took an electric screw driver and a crowbar to the
pavement looking for the man hole. :p The road was destroyed. By the
time we left, they still hadn't found it.

The water shut off in Ashtarak for 36 hours this
week. So we were stuck bucket showering with reserve water that we
heated up in a tea water heater. That was less than fun.

But I'm here now :) So everything is good.

We did service this week at a members house in
Ashtarak the day before I left. We dug the ground up for them to start
putting crops in their yard. It was pretty tough work because the soil
was pretty dry, and at the end I looked at my hand and there was a giant
blister, which promptly popped and started oozing everywhere ( :P
imagery) I'll send a picture :p

Besides that though, we also watched conference in
Armenian this week. So not much else went on. This week was pretty
crazy, but I'll be able to send a ton of photos :)

Love you all :)

Elder Hammer

Two little notes from Jared's letter to me:

I'm in Nork, a little part of Yerevan. This place is filled with
concrete buildings, probably more than Malatia. This place was hit the
hardest by the Soviets.

But yeah, it's getting warmer now that I'm back in Yerevan. I'm in
short sleeves now and it's only a tad cold in the morning. It should be
getting real hot really soon.